“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it,” to put it simply, if we do not learn from history, it is bound to reoccur.

Philosopher George Santayana knew exactly of the dangerous of our former times
and our likeness to continue its pattern. As a society, we can only dream of
total equality as our future and yet we’ve experienced multiple forms of
inequalities throughout history, from the inequalities of health care and
education to the inequalities of the treatment of women and slaves. Some believe that total equality
is a reality for our future, everyone treated the same, while others take into
account the fact that equality, a state of being equal, especially in status,
rights, and opportunities, can only work if everyone starts from the same
place, needing the same help, which is a rarity in our society.

We Will Write a Custom Essay SpecificallyFor You For Only $13.90/page!

Reaching overall fairness in a
society does have a chance of being possible, but it is unfortunately more of a
dream than a reality. Having total equality would require drastic changes in things
like each of our cultures, minds, social and economic statuses. Even if we were
able to make these profound changes, it would be an even harder task to get the
people of society to come to terms with it. For all of society to share the
same equal social status and equal power in politics, economically, and in social
decisions can be considered a reach. The amount of division in these aspects in
our society today would make equality hard to achieve. On the other hand,
striving for equity in a society would be much more feasible. Equity, also an
effort to produce fairness, is giving everyone what they need in a society to
excel based on their individual struggles. To a certain extent we would need a
small amount of inequality in our society in order to receive a chance at equality,
or equity to be exact. The distribution of housing, healthcare, and education
needs to be given out in different terms to meet the certain needs of certain
people in society in order to have a fair and just society.

However, it what shouldn’t be
forgotten is the amount of progress we have made in equality throughout the
years. We have women in congress, African Americans in office, and marriage
licenses given to the LGBTQ community, events that would have never been
possible unless of our society’s gradual movement towards total equality. It is
an unfortunate case though that it seems like every step we take towards this
dream in efforts to make into a reality, something occurs to make us jump two
steps back. Recently, we have laws being passed barring women’s rights, the
mistreatment of certain cultures, and other such inequalities that proves the point
of total equality being a far off dream.

One can only hope that all people
of society will one day be given the equal opportunity to partake in all
aspects of life without taking advantage of one another. Adopting an egalitarian
attitude, erasing the division between the wealthy and middle class, and
fighting the mistreatments of society is a hot topic in today’s conscious mind
which is a great way to take one of those steps toward the fight against
inequality but it just seems like we will always strive and fight for this
total equality but never quite be able to reach it. Certain people like this idea
of division of labor, the ranks in society, division of classes, which only
leads to class struggle and conflict, the exact opposite of equality, a divide
of the powerful and powerless, the rich and the poor.